The Canadiens will once again look to their glorious past next Tuesday night when they hold a captains’ reunion before playing the New York Islanders at the Bell Centre.
Eleven former captains will take part in the pre-game ceremony to celebrate the franchise’s 110th anniversary: Yvan Cournoyer, Serge Savard, Bob Gainey, Chris Chelios, Guy Carbonneau, Kirk Muller, Mike Keane, Pierre Turgeon, Vincent Damphousse, Saku Koivu and Brian Gionta.
Former Montreal Gazette sports columnist Michael Farber likes to say “only two institutions in Western civilization truly grasp ceremony: the House of Windsor and the Montreal Canadiens” and this will surely be another nice celebration of the past for a franchise that has won a record 24 Stanley Cups.
But this franchise should be much more focused on the present and the future, including Saturday’s game against the Philadelphia Flyers at the Bell Centre (3 p.m., SN, RDS, TSN 690 Radio) followed by Sunday’s game in Boston against the Bruins (7 p.m., SN, RDS, TSN 690 Radio).
It has been 26 years since the Canadiens’ last Stanley Cup and I believe fans are more interested in winning another one instead of remembering past glories. A young generation of fans has no idea what it’s like to see the Canadiens hoist the Cup and the team looks nowhere close to doing it again in the near future.
The Canadiens head into this weekend’s back-to-back games on a season-high six-game losing streak (0-4-2), during which they have been outscored 31-16 and goalies Carey Price and Keith Kinkaid have a combined for an .837 save percentage. Their power play has gone 2-for-17 during the slump, dropping to 18th in the NHL after Thursday’s 6-4 loss to the New Jersey Devils, and their penalty-killing ranks 30th. Defensively, the Canadiens rank 29th, allowing an average of 3.52 goals per game.
The Canadiens ranked 10th in the NHL in offence after Thursday’s loss, scoring an average of 3.32 goals per game, but defence wins championships and the Habs’ defence has been terrible. So has Price, who ranked 44th in the NHL in goals-against average (3.19) and 41st in save percentage (.897) after Thursday’s loss, which dropped his record to 10-8-3.
It doesn’t look like there is any quick fix for the Canadiens’ problems, especially if Price keeps facing so many two-on-ones and other Grade A scoring chances.
“If it was quickly, it would have been done after one game, not six,” head coach Claude Julien said Friday when asked if there was any quick fix. “So that’s not a quick fix to me. I think it’s one of those things where I guess, from game to game, frustration has crept in more and more. I think the secret to turning things around for anybody that is going through that is pretty simple: Just do your job. Don’t do anybody else’s, do your job and do it well.
“When you try and do too much you end up out of position, you end up trying to do your job and somebody else’s, and we all know that never works. So it’s about taking a step back, just doing your job and doing it well.”
Julien decided not to have his players practise Friday in Brossard, instead having a team meeting with film work and off-ice conditioning during a tough stretch of three games in four days. Julien said he’s planning to start Kinkaid in one of the two games this weekend, but didn’t say which one.
“We’re really not focused on a quick fix or the slump or whatever you want to call it,” forward Max Domi said. “The matter is we’ve got to win our next hockey game and that’s all we’re really focused on. All you can do is put your energy into that and get a win as fast as we can. We’re going to stick together here, we’re going to find a way to do it. We all believe in each other and we’re going to find a way to do it right now.”
There are so many things wrong with the Canadiens that they are bringing back memories of two seasons ago, when they finished 28th in the overall NHL standings.
It’s true the Canadiens were only one point behind the Toronto Maple Leafs for third place in the Atlantic Division after Thursday’s loss, but they were also only five points ahead of the Devils, who were in 15th place in the Eastern Conference and held a game in hand.
If this losing streak continues, the Canadiens are going to dig themselves a very deep hole.
At this point, it wouldn’t be surprising if we’re talking about an eight-game winless streak when the Canadiens honour their former captains next Tuesday night.
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